It’s 12:00. Lunch break. Everyone drops their pens and like a shoal of fish a large crowd moves towards the exit. A shoal of black suits, pencil skirts and white blouses. Faces blur in the swarm of heads. They are all so alike. A few minutes ago, they were all sitting in a row at their tables. They are sitting there in front of the same screens and have the same headphones on. They are having conversations with the same people in the same companies about the same topics. And they’re talking about the same things. Money in the first place. Best quality at the lowest cost. And by 1:00 p.m., the shoal of fish will have disbanded and they’ll be back at their desks.
I’ll watch them wafting through the door. A bubbling is in the air, characterized by the same small talk. I get up and follow them through the door. They all go to the same restaurants and cafes. There they eat the same sandwiches and the same chips, drink the same coffee and have the same conversations with their colleagues about other colleagues or their work.
And I sit at a table and watch the people. I watch them all looking at the same mobile phones, making the same phone calls and reading the same newspaper. I look down on myself. I too wear a skirt and a blouse. I painfully realize that I am no different from them. I too am part of the shoal of fish. I too swam through the door with them to go to the same restaurant and eat the same sandwich. And yet I feel so different.
Maybe the other people in this shoal feel different too. On the outside they all look exactly the same. But I imagine the people in their suits and pencil skirts going home in the evening. Some are greeted by a loving wife or a happy man and laughing children. They drink an after-work beer and cook together. Others live alone, because they want to or because they have no other choice. They live in a house, an apartment or perhaps with their parents. They are happy or sad, satisfied with their life or want more, love their job or secretly curse it. They are open and confident or shy and reserved. They feel left alone or like they belong.
And I realize that these people, just like me, are actually all different. They all have their stories and their reasons. Even though they all ended up in the same place and look the same, sitting in an office with the same screens, the same headphones and the same clothes. With the same conversations and the same small talk topics.
But when they return home, they detach themselves from the shoal of fish and the bubbling, let themselves drift home and are no longer part of that swarm. Then they are different again. Only to be carried away again by the shoal of fish tomorrow. I leave my desk, put my headset aside and go home.